Reviews & Articles
Painting Yankwai Wong
Gerard HENRY
at 2:56pm on 22nd December 2008
Wong Yan-kwai exhibits his new works at the Museum of the Hong Kong University. The exhibition includes a selection of oil paintings, drawings and postal art, as well as two very curious and marvellous objects, a painted bible and a tiny painting on wood.
Wong Yan-kwai is a consummate painter. He occupies a very special place in the Hong Kong art scene, in the sense that most other Hong Kong artists situate their work within the social context that spring from a close connection with the local urban environment. Wong Yan-kwai, on the other hand, is engaged in a more personal and demanding quest for what lies at the very heart of the creative artistic process itself: a man facing the world both spiritually and bodily, he attempts to make visible that which is invisible to everyone else. The artist conducts this struggle with his hand, within the narrow space that separates it from the canvas. This is not merely a conceptual or intellectual battle, it is more than that. It is actually like hand-to-hand combat, a physical struggle with colours, the paint, light and the canvas or paper. The result is a work of art that exists in its own right that has no need for concepts or words to express itself; it is a work of art, to use the poet Paul Valery’s words, “to which the artist brings his body”.
Colour is his primary material; it makes up the structure, form and movement of his work. Bright and strong, his colours overlap, contrast, beckon and push against one another producing a strong musical resonance that keeps them in constant movement. His work is a constant creation and destruction in motion. These highly charged paintings leave a strong impression on the viewer. One can sometimes see a familiar object among the many forms that make up his work, such as an airplane or fish, but they have been partially altered, losing their shape, identity and nature. The painter has recreated them by making them into simple “colour-objects” with which he plays liberally on the canvas. He uses a large palette of colours and exercises mastery over all of them, something which is quite rare.
The university museum does not allow a lot of originality in the setting of the exhibition, his painting are arranged in a circle around the semi-circular wall, but the curator Tina Pang did a more interesting setting in the first room with his charcoal drawings and an installation in a window of a video coupled with the artist “bible” the most intriguing part of the exhibition.
The artist took an ordinary Chinese bible, and like as we do in a travel notebook, painted directly on the printed words many miniature paintings. He covers the surface of the page with strong colours: midnight blue, green inflected with shadows, velvety red, and storm-ridden grey. From time to time shafts of light flash across the pages, gold shines there. The result is a rich book of more than 70 paintings comparable to the books of prayers hand made by the monks in their monasteries in the Middle Age.
Good painters are quite rare now; many mainland painters use a style more close to graphic design. Others artists give their preference to multimedia, that is why this exhibition is worth to see. The fact that Wong Yan-kwai being a dedicated painter does not prevent him from also working with sculpture, photography, video and postal art.
Exhibition: 《Painting Yankwai Wong》
Date: 19.11.2008 – 7.1.2009
Venue: University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong
Enquiries: 852 2541 5500
Website: www.hku.hk/hkumag/exhibition.html
Wong Yan-kwai is a consummate painter. He occupies a very special place in the Hong Kong art scene, in the sense that most other Hong Kong artists situate their work within the social context that spring from a close connection with the local urban environment. Wong Yan-kwai, on the other hand, is engaged in a more personal and demanding quest for what lies at the very heart of the creative artistic process itself: a man facing the world both spiritually and bodily, he attempts to make visible that which is invisible to everyone else. The artist conducts this struggle with his hand, within the narrow space that separates it from the canvas. This is not merely a conceptual or intellectual battle, it is more than that. It is actually like hand-to-hand combat, a physical struggle with colours, the paint, light and the canvas or paper. The result is a work of art that exists in its own right that has no need for concepts or words to express itself; it is a work of art, to use the poet Paul Valery’s words, “to which the artist brings his body”.
Colour is his primary material; it makes up the structure, form and movement of his work. Bright and strong, his colours overlap, contrast, beckon and push against one another producing a strong musical resonance that keeps them in constant movement. His work is a constant creation and destruction in motion. These highly charged paintings leave a strong impression on the viewer. One can sometimes see a familiar object among the many forms that make up his work, such as an airplane or fish, but they have been partially altered, losing their shape, identity and nature. The painter has recreated them by making them into simple “colour-objects” with which he plays liberally on the canvas. He uses a large palette of colours and exercises mastery over all of them, something which is quite rare.
The university museum does not allow a lot of originality in the setting of the exhibition, his painting are arranged in a circle around the semi-circular wall, but the curator Tina Pang did a more interesting setting in the first room with his charcoal drawings and an installation in a window of a video coupled with the artist “bible” the most intriguing part of the exhibition.
The artist took an ordinary Chinese bible, and like as we do in a travel notebook, painted directly on the printed words many miniature paintings. He covers the surface of the page with strong colours: midnight blue, green inflected with shadows, velvety red, and storm-ridden grey. From time to time shafts of light flash across the pages, gold shines there. The result is a rich book of more than 70 paintings comparable to the books of prayers hand made by the monks in their monasteries in the Middle Age.
Good painters are quite rare now; many mainland painters use a style more close to graphic design. Others artists give their preference to multimedia, that is why this exhibition is worth to see. The fact that Wong Yan-kwai being a dedicated painter does not prevent him from also working with sculpture, photography, video and postal art.
Exhibition: 《Painting Yankwai Wong》
Date: 19.11.2008 – 7.1.2009
Venue: University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong
Enquiries: 852 2541 5500
Website: www.hku.hk/hkumag/exhibition.html
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